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This Presidential Issue, with contributions by scholars from Asia, Australia, the Middle East, South America, Africa, Europe, and the United States, illustrates how the idea of Global international relations (IR) could serve as a framework for both scholarly debate and empirical research and analysis. This issue is divided into two main parts. The first part contains nine feature articles that illustrate the multiple dimensions of a Global IR research agenda, overall demonstrating how bringing in non-Western ideas and agency broadens the horizons of existing IR knowledge. The topics covered here include Chinese conceptions of “relationality;” colonial interactions in the Indian Ocean to diffuse Westphalian sovereignty through processes of localization, comparing regionalisms, and norm dynamics in Asia and Europe; and the contribution of intercivilizational dialogues in bridging the West-Rest divide. Together, these articles challenge dominant understandings of these issues in current IR theory and highlight the place and agency of non-Western societies in the global order. The second part of the Presidential Issue, the Forum Section, contains ten short contributions that were drawn from two Presidential Theme Panels at the ISA 2015 Convention in New Orleans. These Forum essays not only highlight the obstacles facing the realization of Global IR, including some traditionalist objections to the whole idea, but also offer some pathways to overcome them. Overall, the Presidential Issue suggests that a Global IR is both possible and desirable.

Demographic ageing is a key societal challenge in Europe as well as in many other western and non-western societies. A crucial dimension concerns elderly daily mobility patterns. While still partaking fewer and shorter trips than younger generations, today’s elderly have been found increasingly (auto)mobile. Although the elderly benefit from the independence, freedom of movement, and social inclusion, concerns may rise regarding the environmental and accessibility impacts of this induced mobility. The present study adds to the expanding literature on elderly mobility, an integrated analysis of the effects of socio-demographic, health, trip, spatial and weather attributes on elderly mobility. Utilizing travel diary data for Greater Rotterdam, The Netherlands, trip frequencies and transport mode choices of the elderly are analysed by means of zero-inflated negative binomial models as well as multinomial logit regression models, and contrasted to the non-elderly subpopulation to explore (dis)similarities. While the results show common determinants, the models also highlight important differences in the magnitude of the estimated coefficients and factors only influencing transport patterns for the elderly. Embedded in the context of an aging population, the empirical findings assist policy-makers and planners in several respects: For transportation plans and programs it is critical to recognize mobility needs of the elderly. As the seniors are becoming increasingly automobile, the results call for strategies to encourage older people to use more physically active and environmentally friendly transport modes such as public transport, walking and cycling.

What normative compass can appropriately ground a theory for contemporary “non-Western” societies? This question has become urgent amid the pressure to decolonize political science and academia. The hybridity of numerous contemporary non-Western societies means that political theorists cannot refuse to engage with either Western-originated or premodern Indigenous concepts and ways of thinking that bear on the local public culture. However, these normative strands alone are unsuitable for grounding a contemporary theory. This methodological dilemma can be overcome if theorists adopt normative hybridity as a methodological stance. Normative hybridity suggests that hybridity is not only a feature of the theorist’s context of reference but should also be their modus operandi. Normative hybridity already underpins relevant works in contemporary Confucian political theory. Drawing from these works, I illustrate three methods to apply normative hybridity to theory building. This novel methodological approach uniquely addresses current political theory discussions and influences non-Western policymaking.

Taking its distance from classical liberalism, political liberalism seeks to avoid controversial metaphysical assumptions by starting from institutional features of modern polities. Political liberalism also extends the limits of liberal toleration by envisioning societies that it considers nonliberal but decent. This article is concerned with the relationship between these two dimensions of political liberalism, specifically as they are instantiated in the work of John Rawls. I show that these two dimensions are in tension with each other. Put simply, if political liberalism is institutional, then decent societies are impossible. Decent societies are only conceivable within the ahistorical realm of values—a realm that Rawls sometimes slips into, even though its avoidance is central to political liberalism’s claim of distinctiveness. Rawls’s appeal to hypotheticals to defend his account of decent societies only serves to mask this tension and to foreclose important avenues of inquiry about the non-Western world. I also deploy throughout the article archival material that evinces Rawls’ concern with ethnocentrism but also the difficulties he faced in coming up with an adequate account of non-Western societies. On the argument I offer here, this intractability is to be expected, since Rawls did not recognize that the problems with his account were not purely philosophical, but in fact, sociological, political, and historical.

Objective: This study examines the determinants of marriage decline in South Korea, a representative case of the demographic crisis sweeping East Asia. Background: The major theories accounting for marriage and family trends are for the most part based on Western cases. A complementing focus on non-Western societies is likely to identify a more diverse range of processes governing marriage patterns in advanced capitalist societies. Method: The study draws on the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) to analyze a sample of 4201 unmarried individuals whose longitudinal data were organized into 55,989 person-year records. Discrete-time hazard models incorporating 23 waves of KLIPS data (1998-2020) identify the gendered determinants of marriage. Results: Socioeconomic resources continue to positively impact mens marriage chances although income, relative to employment status and educational attainment, has become paramount for members of the younger 1980s cohort. Parental wealth, an important precondition for home purchases, also positively impacts the likelihood of marriage for men. Income and parental wealth have become important for women as well but unlike the documented educational crossover that has occurred elsewhere, high educational attainment remains negatively associated with marriage probability for Korean women. Conclusion: This study clarifies the scope conditions for arguments about the shifting economic foundations of marriage, while foregrounding the enduring legacy of extended-family resources in strong familism societies. The results also lend empirical leverage to past studies highlighting the clear disincentives for marriage among highly educated women and provide a more comprehensive picture of why underprivileged men are being left out of Korea's marriage market.

Two main ways to enter a marriage are through free choice and through an arrangement between families, known as an arranged marriage. In this study, we compared differences in three dimensions of love (Intimacy, Passion, and Commitment) between spouses in love-based marriages and arranged marriages among five non-Western societies: Bhotiya from the Himalayas, Igbo from Nigeria, Kimeru from Kenya, Meru from Tanzania, and Tsimane’ from Bolivia. When considering all data gathered from the five cultures, free choice and arranged marriages did not differ significantly in average love scores. However, within cultures, some differences did emerge between free choice and arranged marriages, such as spouses from free choice marriages from Bhotiya and Tsimane’ culture showing higher levels of Intimacy than those from arranged marriages. However, in the Bhotiya, this difference was only evident in marriages lasting longer than 10 years. Moreover, spouses from free choice marriages from Bhotiya reported higher levels of passion, while spouses from free choice marriages from Tsimane’ reported higher levels of commitment than individuals from arranged marriages. Conversely, wives from arranged marriages from Meru culture from Tanzania reported higher levels of Intimacy and Passion as compared to wives from free choice marriages. In Kimeru and Igbo, no significant differences were found. These results contribute to the growing body of literature on the relationship between culture, love, and marriage. Our data also challenge the Western perception that arranged marriages lack love.

Since the 2000s, China has been fast establishing English-language academic journals to further internationalize research. This article delineates a national scenario of such journals in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) and explores their efforts and predicaments in bringing China’s HSS research to the world. Based on first-hand data collected empirically through interviews and documents, it shows that HSS English-language journals in China attempt to challenge yet are conditioned at the same time by the imbalanced international knowledge structure. While still at a preliminary stage of development in terms of quantity and quality, the journals have already been confronted with major challenges including English language hurdles, unfavorable position in research evaluation systems, unfamiliarity with standards of international academic writing and publishing, and tensions between international ambition and local commitment. This article argues that HSS journals in non-Western societies including China need to strike a balance between their contemporary bid for international visibility and long-term contribution to multiple perspectives in global HSS research.

PurposeThe unstoppable and exponential growth of social media use has given rise to concerns about the consequent effects on users. Among the major concerns are the psychological consequences, which have received considerable academic attention. The current mixed-methods research aims to examine women's social media use and its effects on their psychological well-being in a patriarchal culture, namely Pakistan.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs a mixed-method research methodology. The quantitative section collected data from 240 women and used structural equation modelling to test the proposed hypotheses. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the in-depth interviews with ten women.FindingsThe integration of the findings revealed increased use of social media by women and its beneficial effects (communication and socialisation, escapism and self-presentation), though qualitative findings revealed the cultural implications and obstacles that women face (online anonymity and digital asylum). The study calls attention to women's social media usage patterns and the resulting effects on women's psychological well-being in a low-income country with a patriarchal social structure.Originality/valueMost research remains limited to Western societies and young populations. The situation is somewhat different in developing economies with traditionally preserved cultures compared to Western societies. This study uniquely examines the influence of social media on psychological well-being in a developing country with a special cultural context.

This study investigates how income, education, and subjective class identity jointly shaped well-being in China during the COVID-19 pandemic. While prior research has often examined these factors separately, their combined influence within the Chinese context remains underexplored. Given the institutional significance of the household registration system (Hukou), gender and Hukou were incorporated as control variables. Using data from the 2021 China General Social Survey (CGSS), both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were conducted. The findings indicate that income, education, and subjective class identity were positively associated with well-being, with subjective class identity showing the strongest effect and potentially mediating the relationship between socioeconomic factors and well-being. Additional analyses reveal variations across gender, Hukou, income and education groups. These results highlight the importance of integrating subjective social perceptions into the study of well-being and can contribute to a more contextualized understanding of well-being in non-Western societies.

Much existing literature in anthropology suggests that teaching is rare in non-Western societies, and that cultural transmission is mostly vertical (parent-to-offspring). However, applications of evolutionary theory to humans predict both teaching and non-vertical transmission of culturally learned skills, behaviors, and knowledge should be common cross-culturally. Here, we review this body of theory to derive predictions about when teaching and non-vertical transmission should be adaptive, and thus more likely to be observed empirically. Using three interviews conducted with rural Fijian populations, we find that parents are more likely to teach than are other kin types, high-skill and highly valued domains are more likely to be taught, and oblique transmission is associated with high-skill domains, which are learned later in life. Finally, we conclude that the apparent conflict between theory and empirical evidence is due to a mismatch of theoretical hypotheses and empirical claims across disciplines, and we reconcile theory with the existing literature in light of our results.